open back up to 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 and finish up what we started last Wednesday. Alright, so last Wednesday we were looking at 1 Thessalonians 1 thinking about four marks of what it means for an individual to turn to God from idols and we backed up a little bit. The passage here is 8 to 10, but we backed up a little bit. to get a little more into the context of what Paul's saying. So let's start in verse... Let's start in verse 5. This is after Paul says he knows their election of God. And then he says, this is how, for our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance, as you know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy and the Holy Ghost, so that you are in samples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad, so that we need not to speak anything. For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come." And so we said last week that we could call this the fruit of a true conversion. These four points, really we said there were three, but these four points are helpful for us to be thinking about as we try to detect, discern the fruit of a true conversion. That's something that every church ought to be interested in growing in and being able to grow wiser in. We are assuming that we're trying to discern those fruits every single time we vote on someone either being baptized or not after a conversion. So these four things are helpful as we think about them. That is repentance and faith, obedience and hope. So they turned from, I'm sorry, they turned to God from idols, repentance and faith, to serve the living God, obedience, and to wait for His Son, hope. Paul says, when our gospel came to you, it produced this in your life. We could see this. Not only could we see this, but everybody's talking about your faith. because it has gone out and abroad. We also said it could all be. We could think of it as what every Christian needs to grow. That is, we all need to exercise these fruits in order to grow as a Christian. Repentance and faith is not a one-time thing. We talked about that last week. It's an ongoing lifestyle. Obedience is something you have to commit yourself to every day when you wake up in the morning. Yesterday's obedience will not get you through today. And then hope really is what the Lord uses to anchor our souls and to get us through or to help us endure, not just through affliction, but even through the mundane. So what every Christian needs to grow, we need to exercise these. We also need to grow in them and we'll spend the rest of our lives growing in them. And like we said, we're thinking about repentance and faith. This is what we talked about last week. And then this week we're going to look at obedience and hope. So just as a. Just as a reminder, functional definitions, that's whenever you just boil it all the way down to what are we actually looking for? Or what does this mean in a functional way? Repentance is when you turn. Faith is when you trust. Obedience is when you act. And hope is when you expect. Confident expectation. And so we could spend a lot of time reviewing last week and I could easily get caught doing that, but I'm not going to. So let's. Let's skip to where we are. One of the things that is worth reemphasizing is that repentance and faith are a package deal. There is no such thing as repentance where there is no faith, and there's also no such thing as faith where there is no repentance. And we'd really tried to emphasize this last week just in this whole word picture of. Repentance is turning from something and turning to God or turning to Christ. It's not turning from something and turning to something else. You can swap out one idol for another. You can rearrange the flesh all you want, but that's not repentance. Repentance is whenever you turn away from sin and you turn toward Christ. It's always a package deal. and repentance and faith are an ongoing lifestyle. Repent and believe in the New Testament when Jesus says it there in Mark 115. If you get the tense of those verbs, it's be repenting and be believing. Present tense, ongoing. All right, now, obedience. Paul says, you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God. We could go to Romans 6 and see where Paul says that whoever you yield your members up to, you become that person or that thing's slave. You present yourselves a slave to something. We're all slaves, whether we like it or not, as far as the metaphor that Paul's using there. We're all in the middle of serving something or someone. The question is, what is it? And Paul says about the Thessalonians, that they turn from serving their idols to serve that's actively doing something, serve the living God. So obedience, the key to spiritual growth, you're not actually. You're not actually. on a trajectory of growing until you are obeying. I mean, you can have wonderful thoughts about repentance and faith, and you might be able to eloquently describe some of these things, but if you're not actually repenting and believing, it doesn't mean a thing. You can have wonderful thoughts about the church and get very passionate about how much you love it and treasure it and how highly esteemed it ought to be. But if you can't get yourself out of the house and into the church when it's time to assemble for worship, all those eloquent words don't really mean all that much. So obedience really is what the Lord is looking for. And the reason that I say that is because sometimes we really can fool ourselves with emotionalism. Worship should engage the emotions at some level, but just because you get emotional about something doesn't mean anything unless you're being transformed as far as the Christian life is concerned. Emotionalism can be very, very deceptive. I've known a lot of people who would get very emotional about things and really have this idea that there was a real spiritual depth and then when they were put to the test, they just fell flat. And it's because it wasn't how close is my walk with the Lord, it's how fuzzy are my feelings when I think about the things of the Lord. Those are two different things. Feelings are great as long as they're motivating you to walk with God. There's nothing wrong with feelings. God has feelings. He created us to have feelings. But your feelings are not a gauge on your spiritual maturity. I can think of somebody right now that I know who has completely hardened their heart against the Lord, against his church, against his pastors, and yet if you were to read him a Charles Smurgeon morning and evening, he would shed a tear like that. Well, it's emotionalism. That's not an indication that the individual is mature and growing and those kinds of things. Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And so we know what God desires and how God has laid out the kingdom in such a way that if we want to express our love to him, it's through obedience. Sometimes we can think about this whole business of obedience and get kind of legalistic and rigid about it or think that it's legalism and that it's rigidity. But the fact is, obedience, if we're thinking about modern day terms, God's love language is your obedience. You want to present something to Him through Christ that's acceptable to express your love to Him, it's always going to be obedience. You don't have any better ideas than God does. You can't improve upon what God has desired and laid out for His people. And so, obedience is important. And it's also, in many circles, downplayed. You know, you hear things, and it's a half-truth, you know, you hear things and people say, well, you know, you don't know my heart. Well, no, but we can see the fruit that your heart's producing, okay? and the fruit is always consistent with the root. And so if your life is characterized by a life of disobedience, the fruit, then yes, we can have an idea of what's going on in your heart, because that fruit is coming from somewhere. So obedience, it's important. You'll see how 1 Thessalonians really emphasizes this. Look in 1 Thessalonians 1.3, Remembering. Without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our father. OK, they're remembering their work. That's obedience produced by faith. Their labor, so this work of love, work of faith, labor of love, the of is a produced by, that's what that means. So it's work or obedience that's produced by faith. It's labor or obedience produced by love. And it's endurance, that's just another synonym there for obedience produced by hope. And so the, The fruit of the Spirit, or what the Spirit is working out in the believer's life, is obedience. We think about what it means, God's goal for every Christian, that we be conformed to the likeness or the image of Christ. And we're not going to do this, but we could go through John. We've already seen some of it in John chapter six, where Jesus, we could go through John and show where Jesus essentially says, I don't do anything without my father. The things that I say, they come from my father. The things that I do, they come from my father. I don't do anything of myself. This complete dependence, but complete conformity. And this is what and he's the firstborn among many brethren. So this is God's goal for every Christian. None of this happens accidentally. Growth and obedience require intentionality. There are specific ways that we can be distracted from this. There are specific ways that we omit obedience. That is, it's not just what we do, but what we don't do. Specific ways that we're lazy or rebellious or so forth or so on. And so we've got to be intentional and aware here. Now, we said this already, but just a reminder here. Obedience is when you act. It's when you actually do something. Obedience is very important to God. Obedience is very important to God. Sometimes people can distort the reality of and the beauty of the substitutionary atonement in two different ways. So on one hand, you have people who say, well, yes, God accepts Christ's sacrifice, but you still have to do something. Your works are still involved in there somewhere. And we would say, no, that's not true that we stand before God through the righteousness of Christ in the righteousness of Christ. There's nothing that we claim. There's nothing. You know, we said there's nothing in our hands. We bring simply to that cross. We cling that you know it's nothing but him. OK, but then you have others who would say, well, since we stand in the righteousness of Christ, then obedience doesn't really matter all that much. It's not really that big of a deal, except for the fact that it is. We do know, based on Ephesians 2, that we are saved by grace through faith, but we also know that we are saved unto good works. We are created in Christ unto good works. God's heart in 1 Samuel doesn't change. We talked a couple of weeks ago, I can't remember what Solomon was, but we talked about God's immutability, the fact that He does not change. So in 1 Samuel 15, as Samuel is talking to Saul, King Saul, about Saul's disobedience, that Saul tries to downplay and Saul tries to blame on somebody else, in 1 Samuel 15, 22. It says, And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than to sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as a sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry." So as far as verse 22, what Samuel's talking about is the Lord had told Saul, you need to kill everything. And Saul went in to conquer this people and he killed some of it. And then he said, I was saving the rest to sacrifice. In other words, what he was saying was, I heard what God said, but I had a better idea. And Samuel comes and says, obedience is better than sacrifice. In other words, you can't improve upon what God has called you to. He's not concerned with your sacrifice. He's not concerned with your offering if you're doing it in the place of doing what he's called you to do. And then he just lays it out. Rebellion is the sin of witchcraft. Stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry. So obedience is something that's very important to God. And it ought to be something that is very important to us. Now, we know this. We used to and most of you probably still do with young kids seeing this in your homes. The wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. If we're thinking about what it means to be a growing Christian, there's no such thing as a Christian who's growing in Christ-likeness and at the same time who's growing in foolishness. If you're growing in Christ-likeness, you're growing in wisdom. Christ is our wisdom. As we're being conformed to His image, we're practically growing into that wisdom. 1 Corinthians 2, we've been given the mind of Christ that is in Scripture that our minds could be conformed and we could be transformed. So in Luke 6, we see two things as it relates to obedience. Luke 6. Jesus starts in verse 44. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor do a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good. And an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil. for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. Now verse 46 is one of those areas of importance. And why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Okay, so Jesus says, why in the world would you call me Lord if you were gonna disobey? If you aren't, interested in obedience, Jesus says, why would you call me master? Why would you call me Lord? That doesn't make sense. So again, it's Jesus is serious about obedience. Now when we say this, we're not saying that we're doing this in our own power. We're not saying that. Jesus has got some sort of a checklist critiquing every little thing that we do and our weakness as we seek to please Him and through the power of the Spirit obey Him. What we are saying is, if we're going to claim that we're followers of Christ, but in reality we're really being conformed to the world, Jesus says, that's not going to work. Why would you call me Lord if you're not interested in obeying what I've said? Okay, so it's serious to him. And then he goes on in verse 47 and says, whosoever cometh to me and heareth my sayings and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like. And then if we, I'm not going to turn there, but if you tie that in with Matthew 7, he says, I'm going to show you what a wise man's like. The man who hears my word and does it. is like a man who built his house upon the rock. But the man who hears my word and doesn't do it is like the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. And essentially he goes on, and the illustration is the house is an individual's life, and whether you like it or not, whether you're a Christian or a pagan, the storms are going to come down, the winds are going to beat, the pressures and trials and difficulties and tribulations that accompany a fallen world are going to visit your house if you live in this world long enough. And those who have heard the Word of Christ and obey it will stand firm. That is, their wisdom will help them navigate through that in such a way that they will not be destroyed, they'll actually be strengthened. But the foolish man, okay, now again, the foolish man is not the person worshiping in this scenario at a pagan temple. The foolish man here or foolish woman here is the individual who has sat under the sound of God's word day in and day out and day in and day out and they haven't done anything with it. They're not interested in obedience. And when those storms come, their life collapses. They're destroyed, or at least they're greatly hindered. So it's wisdom and foolishness, but these aren't two small things whenever we're thinking about scripture. To be wise is to be godly. To be foolish really is to live like an ungodly person. It's to reject God's wisdom. So we've said as far as obedience goes before 1st Corinthians 5-9, Paul says, I make it my aim to please him. That's not in the KJV. It's a little clearer here than in the KJV, but he says whether I'm alive or whether I'm dead, I make it my aim or my ambition or my goal to be pleasing unto Christ. And he's thinking about obedience here. And we talked about this, this little rhyme that goes with it, just two choices on the shelf, pleasing God or pleasing self. This is true about every decision you'll ever make. The reality is life's not, I mean, we can get into some pretty difficult situations and we can get into some complex things, but where we really are trying to use a lot of wisdom to discern. But for the most part, it's going to be pretty clear whenever we go to make our decisions, what is going to be pleasing to the Lord? And then what am I going to ignore in order to please myself? And again, just a way to think about obedience. Obedience is the path to transformation. Again, God did not give us the Bible to simply inform our minds. He gave us the Bible to transform our lives. So He doesn't just want you to think the way that Jesus thinks. He wants your mind to be transformed so that your life can be transformed. Your thoughts will dictate the way that you live your life. What you believe will affect what you treasure. If we really believed accurately about sin, if we really believed that it was as detrimental and destructive as it was, we would never toy around with it. But there are just times when we don't believe that. We're in unbelief. We're doubting what God has said. So what we think, the information that we receive in Scripture, meant to transform the way that we live our lives. You can see that in Romans 12, one through two. Ephesians 4 with the put off, be renewed, put on. James 1.22, don't just be a hearer of the word only, but be a doer of the word. Obedience is highly emphasized as you make your way through scripture. So repentance and faith, obedience, and then the last one is hope. And we've talked about hope. in the last month or so. What is hope? Hope is when you expect. Hope is when you expect. You know, there's a... It's not really new, A movement that emphasizes these ideas like mindfulness, maybe you've heard of that, maybe you haven't. It's just the whole idea of you trying to stay in the present. There can be some helpfulness to that. But you know that the Christian, and really anybody, you're not gonna make it if you just simply stay in the present. Because sometimes the present is so difficult, if that's all you can see, you're going to throw in the towel. You know, we've been given hope that Jesus Christ is coming back to set all things right, to help us move through the present. We were never supposed to stay here. And this was never supposed to be the only thing we ever thought about. Now, it can be helpful if your mind's stuck in the past somewhere and you're rehashing all these hurts and this, that, and the other, This mindfulness is really a form of Eastern mysticism, this Eastern mysticism meditation type stuff that just seeks to clear your mind and have you just enjoy the moment, or at least just be in the moment. And it's really, honestly, a bunch of hogwash. If you ever ask anybody to talk about that, there's really not much to say. But I'm not gonna get off on that. All right, hope is a confident expectation that God will do and be everything he's ever promised. You know, sometimes we have to walk by faith instead of sight, don't we? And when I say sometimes, that's the way we ought to live our lives. But there are times where the Lord just throws us off the into the deep end, and we have to walk by faith. We cannot walk by sight, because what we're seeing isn't consistent with what we thought we would be experiencing. We never thought our lives could look like this, or pain could be this painful, or so forth and so on. Hope is that when you're walking through the difficulties, It's this confident expectation that God is with me and He's going to be what He's promised He would be for me. And He's going to do everything He's promised. And I don't have to know how, and I don't have to know when. I just know He's going to. I'm expecting that. Hope is also embracing the reality that God is at work in my current circumstances and he's going to use them for my good and his glory. OK, that's again walking by faith. Hope and faith are very close. Walking by faith. OK, expecting that God's going to do. What he said he would do. One reason. We've talked about this in the recent weeks. One reason for many of our disappointments in life is that we are so quick to place our hopes in things that God never guaranteed. You know, we do it all the time. I don't know really how to explain all of that except for it's just our wishful thinking. But many times we just get the wind knocked out of us because our expectations were not anywhere close to being lined up with God's word. Now, by that I don't necessarily mean, we do know that scripture says in this world you will have tribulation, and when tribulation comes, sometimes it does knock the wind out of us, not because we never thought we would ever suffer, but because suffering can be hard when it is. But sometimes we can expect, we can just expect this romanticized life that God has never ever guaranteed. Okay, so hope, as we said a couple of weeks ago, your hope must come with a chapter and verse. If God hasn't promised it, you have no business putting your hope in it. Okay, so putting our hopes in places God has never guaranteed. And then another reason for many of our disappointments is a lack of faith in what God has said. Okay, so these are really two sides of the same coin. On one hand, we're making things up and hoping God's gonna give it to us. On the other hand, we're ignoring what God has said, wondering why we can't find comfort. Okay, so embracing what God has said over and above what I wish. Now, hope is going to affect the way you live in a lot of different ways. And we're thinking about expectations. Some people can become enslaved to sin and believe that they could never, ever overcome, that the temptation is just too strong for their life. And I'm talking about believers here. You know, first Corinthians 10, 13 will not allow us to believe that. That every temptation that you and I will face is common demand. And in every temptation, God is going to make a way of escape. Which means you do not have to respond to temptation with sin and idolatry. So 1st Corinthians 1013 is a big hope verse for people who are struggling with particular sins and feel like you're so overwhelmed that you could just never overcome. It's not true. It's not true. Romans 5, biblical hope. We'll turn there. I can't remember now what the word here is. Whenever Paul says that we glory in our tribulations in verse 3 and we know that our tribulations work or produce patience and patience experience and experience hope Hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." That little phrase, maketh not ashamed, could also be translated, hope does not disappoint. The whole idea here is that God has never made a promise He'll never keep. You will never be disappointed by placing your hope in God and in Scripture. because God comes through every time. Now, it might not be on our timeline, we might have to wait, but ultimately, biblical hope does not disappoint. We looked at this a couple of weeks ago, Lamentations 3, 21 through 23, when Jeremiah says that, I recall this to mind and therefore I have hope. Again, biblical hope is access through Scripture. It's access through Scripture. said that earlier, it comes with a chapter and verse. Lamentations 324. The Lord is my portion. Biblical hope is rooted in a living, loving relationship with God. It's not rooted in. Expected temporary outcomes. You may or may not receive an expected temporary outcome. You will always receive the presence of God, and when we're thinking about the end of redemption or redemption complete, an unhindered face-to-face relationship with Jesus Christ. So our hope to grow in love with and for God, that's always going to be something that we can do. And then 1 John 3, 1-3, we'll turn there. 1 John 3, 1-3. He says, behold, what manner of love the father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore, the world knoweth us not because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. and every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." So biblical hope fuels obedience. Every man that seriously considers and ponders this reality that one of these days, I'm going to see Jesus Christ face to face, and my fellowship with Him is going to be unhindered, that fuels a desire to have more of that now. And so every man that has this hope in him purifies himself in anticipation for what one day will be a reality, growing into what will be a reality. And then we looked at this earlier, 1 Thessalonians 1.3, biblical hope produces endurance. Without hope, we would have no reason not to throw in the towel whenever life gets difficult. But hope spurs us and pushes us forward. So thinking about repentance and faith, obedience and hope, the goal is a lifelong growing and exercising of these areas in the Christian life. The strength of your walk with Christ will be determined by the amount of time and attention that you give to these three areas. Now, there's more to it than this, but these three areas are going to be what we would call the fundamental areas of any growing Christian's walk with the Lord. Repentance and faith. Obedience and hope. So that's. That's the end of that one turning from God. I'm sorry, turning to God from idols. Let's pray. Father, we. Again, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for this passage in 1 Thessalonians. And thank You that You have revealed Yourself to us and revealed Your will to us. Lord, we would say we believe. Help our unbelief. Lord, we know that You've called us to a life of repentance and faith. And as we are here tonight, we would be even energetic about renewing that. But we do confess we're going to need Your help whenever sin seems more attractive than you do. Father, with obedience, we can easily nod our head to the fact that obedience is important to you. But Father, we are going to need your help whenever we desire to serve someone or something else over and above serving you. And then Lord, we will again assent to the fact that hope is necessary, but we also confess that it is so easy to turn our eyes on quick fixes and wishful thinking in the midst of trials. And so we pray that you would strengthen our hope. And again, where we lack, we pray you would supply. We thank you and we love you in Jesus name, amen.